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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "forgery"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Wed, 3 Sep 2014 11:35:02 PDTTimeshare Company Sundance Vacations Accused Of Forging Court Order To Delete Discussion Of Its PracticesMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140903/07405728403/timeshare-company-sundance-vacations-accused-forging-court-order-to-delete-discussion-its-practices.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140903/07405728403/timeshare-company-sundance-vacations-accused-forging-court-order-to-delete-discussion-its-practices.shtmlforging a bogus court order to try to get Metafilter to remove a years-old thread.

It started nearly two years ago when Sundance Vacations sent Haughey an email, asking him to remove this 2010 thread in which someone asked about Sundance Vacations marketing process -- starting off with "am I about to get screwed by Sundance Vacactions?" leading to a rather tame discussion about the sales tactics of the timeshare industry, and ways to deal with the dreaded "informational meeting" (really a hard sales pitch). The email included an attachment of a "court order" against someone who was supposedly running a "Sundance Vacations Protest site" barring them from speaking negatively about the company online. I don't see how such a court order is actually legal given the whole First Amendment, but we'll leave that aside for the moment. Haughey pointed out that the person named in the court order was clearly not the person who posted the Metafilter thread, and everyone went on with their lives.

Until a few days ago, when Sundance Vacations sent a new email to Haughey, talking about a new court order, apparently against the person running this Boycott Sundance Vacations Facebook group. Bizarrely, the "court order" listed the Metafilter page in the document. Haughey posted the court order as an image:

As Haughey noted, there are some oddities in that court order. For example, the signature page has a "signature" of "Sundance Vacations" (actually signed as such) rather than the name of an individual, as would actually be required. The part at the top listing the plaintiff and defendant has "Sundance Vacations" in a different size and font than everything else -- suggesting a cheap insertion. Even reading through the document, much of it looks to be about a basic restraining order between two individuals rather than a company. The order mentions "Defendant Friedman" despite the fact there is no Defendant listed with the name Friedman.

On top of that, the Order lists out five URLs which it claims are defamatory and says that plaintiffs can use the order to get those articles removed or delisted. While it's not unheard of for local clueless courts to make such rulings, you can't actually make such an order, because it violates Section 230 of the CDA. Thus even if it were true, it wouldn't be enforceable. But it's not actually true. After questioning it, Haughey called the actual court:

Today (Tuesday) I called a clerk in the Hinds County Chancery Court office. They asked me to fax them a copy of the court order so they could verify the document. I did as requested and a few hours later got a call back from the office saying it was not a real document from their court. The case numbers on the first page are from an unrelated case that took place last year. The clerk said they found a case from August 21, 2014 that used similar language but had different plaintiffs and defendants, but the same lawyers on page 3. In their opinion, it seemed someone grabbed a PDF from a different case and copy/pasted new details to it before sending it on to me.

As Haughey notes, forging court documents is a felony. It kind of makes you wonder, if a company will commit felonies to hide some (very mild) online criticism, what kind of crap will it do in its regular business of trying to do high pressure sales to buy into their timeshare?

Ken "Popehat" White points out that Sundance Vacations is now denying having sent the email, though it's pretty difficult to think who else might be sending such an email.

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]]>getting-into-felony-territoryhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140903/07405728403Tue, 1 Oct 2013 01:36:35 PDTPrenda Soap Opera: Steele Contradicts His Own Previous Claims, Lutz Disappears Again... And The Mother-in-Law SurpriseMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130930/17443824705/prenda-soap-opera-steele-contradicts-his-own-previous-claims-lutz-disappears-again-mother-in-law-surprise.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130930/17443824705/prenda-soap-opera-steele-contradicts-his-own-previous-claims-lutz-disappears-again-mother-in-law-surprise.shtmlNancy Sims' account of what happened in the latest Prenda hearing in Minnesota, but wanted to follow it up with some analysis, because there was a fair bit of interesting stuff in there. As you may recall, this is the case that was reopened after it had already been closed, because the Court wanted to get to the bottom of whether or not Team Prenda was engaged in fraudulent practices. To that end, Magistrate Franklin Noel started demanding actual answers to very on point questions. So far, Team Prenda has continued to dance around actually answering those questions, and the hearing was no different. The things that stood out to me from Sims' writeup:

Mark Lutz's disappearing act:

Mark Lutz has made it something of a habit to not appear where he's required to. He missed a key hearing in San Francisco, as well as a deposition in Georgia. In the California case, it took Team Prenda nearly a week to even acknowledge that Lutz had an excuse, which it then tried to keep shielded from the public. After that was rejected (repeatedly), it was finally admitted that Lutz was apparently "detained" at the airport while trying to board the flight. In this case, they produced a boarding pass, though it's unclear why John Steele would have Lutz's boarding pass, or how he magically found Lutz's friends driving around the streets of Miami early in the morning (the hearing in Minnesota was in the late morning, so it must have been an early flight). It seems unlikely that courts are going to continue to forgive Lutz for his disappearing act when ordered by courts to appear.

It was especially pertinent in this case, given that the whole focus of this particular hearing was on the legitimacy of the copyright assignment to AF Holdings, and the point was to get everyone together in a room to find out who actually signed the document. Lutz not showing up can't make Judge Noel happy -- and he'd already demonstrated an awareness that Team Prenda is up to no good with all of its activities.

John Steele finally takes a stand... though he may wish he hadn't.

This was a bit odd. Seeing as Steele had pleaded the Fifth in the Otis Wright case in California, it seems like a badly miscalculated move to take the stand in Minnesota, where he needed to testify about some of the same issues. His testimony can go back and be used elsewhere, including in Otis Wright's court. You don't get to plead the fifth in one court, pretend that never happened, and then testify in another court.

Furthermore, Steele made a bunch of claims that appear to contradict previous claims. For example, he talks about how he supposedly helped Cooper set up VPR Internationale. Of course, we'd already discussed how the timing on this is wrong. In a previous filing in a case in Arizona, Steele had said, via sworn deposition, that Cooper had expressed interest in setting up a company in early 2011, and then later said that "Cooper ended up not moving forward with the ideas Steele proposed to him." Yet, VPR Internationale was formed in 2010 (i.e.,. before this conversation supposedly happened). And while it had Alan Cooper's name attached to it, it was done with John Steele's email account, and the physical address was of Steele's sister. Also, while Steele had said in the earlier case that Cooper never went forward with this company, now he's claiming he did, which would explain why actual lawsuits were filed under this. It would appear that in either this case or the Arizona case, something Steele said was blatantly false.

Also, the claims about hooking up Lutz and Cooper seem far fetched and unbelievable given a variety of other statements. Cooper directly denied ever talking to Lutz on the stand. But then there's the question of who actually got the signature, and here Steele starts to throw Lutz under the bus, saying that he believed that Cooper had authorized Lutz to sign on his behalf. That's interesting, because in the now infamous deposition of Paul Hansmeier in the case in Northern California, Hansmeier (who is now acting as the lawyer in this case, if you can keep all this straight) specifically said that Lutz had asked Steele about Cooper's signature and if it's legit. From that deposition in February:

Mark Lutz spoke to Mr. Steele and said, Well, I understand that there's an issue with this Alan Cooper and asked Mr. Steele point-blank, Is the signature a forgery. Mr. Steele said the signature is not forgery. And he asked him, Is the -- is this signature authentic. Mr. Steele says, yes, the signature is authentic. Based on Mr. Steele's representation, we have no reason to believe from what Mr. Steele said, at least, that the signature is a forgery or there's some sort fraud going on with respect to the signature.

So... to get this straight: in different cases, Steele, Hansmeier and Lutz have argued that Cooper actually signed the document, that Steele got Cooper to sign the document, that Lutz asked Steele if the signature was legit... and that Steele overheard Cooper and Lutz talking, believed that Cooper gave Lutz permission to sign his name, and that it's likely Lutz who signed for Cooper (something Cooper fully denies).

Of course, if, as they're claiming now, Lutz signed for Cooper, then why would Lutz have called Steele to confirm the signature is legit, as Hansmeier himself said while being deposed? Hansmeier and Steele simply can't keep their story straight -- and telling different courts wholly conflicting answers is generally not a smart thing to do (leaving aside the move to plead the Fifth elsewhere and then testify on the same issues later). I've said it before and I'll say it again: Steele reminds me of people I've known who think they're the smartest person in the world, when they're really not. They seem to think they can talk themselves out of any situation at all. But they generally end up making things worse and worse for themselves.

Thanksgiving in the Steele household may be chilly this year

The wacky issue to come out of the hearing is the involvement of John Steele's mother-in-law, Kim Eckenrode (Steele's wife's maiden name is Kerry Eckenrode). There had been earlier reports that Alan Cooper had received "a text message" telling him to call Paul Godfread, which is how Cooper first found out about his name being used in these cases, leading to his filings claiming forgeries. Team Prenda had long implied that this magic "text" had come from the EFF, which Team Prenda has sought to paint as some crazy group of radicals. But, it turns out that the text message, now entered into evidence, came directly from Steele's own mother-in-law, telling Cooper he should call a lawyer.

Steele tried to play this off by arguing (1) his mother-in-law was religious and disapproved of Steele working with porn companies and (2) she frequented blogs like DieTrollDie and FightCopyrightTrolls. Still, it's quite a leap from those two points to recognizing that Cooper's signature may have been used on filings in various cases without his approval. The fact that the elder Eckenrode understood enough about what was going on to alert Cooper that it appeared her own son-in-law was up to no good with his name just adds an interesting element to all of this. I'm almost surprised Steele didn't claim that Eckenrode was a dues-paying member of EFF.

Either way, I can't imagine that's good for family gatherings in the near future.

Get to the damn point

As is frequently the case, Team Prenda seems to want to do everything possible to avoid actually zeroing in on what judges are asking. In this case, the hearing was solely about whether or not the copyright assignment was legit, and Hansmeier tried to put a bunch of totally irrelevant people on the stand to smear Cooper, and then tried to get Cooper to talk about totally unrelated issues as well. I'm not sure why Hansmeier, Steele and Duffy seem to think this "baffle them with bullshit" strategy will be effective, because the deeper you look, it just makes them look more and more like they're not being straight with the court -- and, while they may think they're smarter than everyone else, I have faith that more and more judges clearly understand what Team Prenda has been up to.

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]]>again?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130930/17443824705Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:07:00 PDTReport From The Court Room On Latest Prenda Hearing In Minnesota: Another Hearing, Another MessNancy Simshttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130930/16321924703/report-court-room-latest-prenda-hearing-minnesota-another-hearing-another-mess.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130930/16321924703/report-court-room-latest-prenda-hearing-minnesota-another-hearing-another-mess.shtmlLawyer Nancy Sims attended the latest Prenda hearing today in Minnesota and agreed to let us post her recap of what happened in the courtroom. We'll have a more complete analysis of what happened later. For now, this is a "just the facts" coverage of the events of the day.

I attended the hearing today in what the presiding judge, Magistrate
Judge Franklin Noel, characterized as “several iterations of” AF
Holdings LLC v. Doe (case nos. 12-1445 – 12-1449). The cases at hand
have all previously settled and been dismissed, but the court
determined it has the inherent authority to investigate whether it has
been the victim of a fraud.

The order
for the hearing limited the discussion to whether the copyright
assignment agreements for two films, "Popular Demand" and "Sexual
Obsession," attached as exhibits in the various AF Holdings v. Doe
cases, are authentic. The discussion during the hearing ranged a bit
further afield.

These are my own impressions of what happened, but I don't guarantee
their accuracy -- I'm not a court reporter, and I'm not fully up on the
details of all the Prenda/AF Holdings/etc cases. And I couldn't always
hear everything. I've tried to be fairly objective in reporting what I
saw and heard, but to own up to my biases, I am an attorney whose
interest in copyright sits solidly on the public interest side. I
don't represent or have any interests with respect to any of the folks
present in court today, to the best of my knowledge. (How's that for
lawyer-talk.)

Individuals present in the courtroom today included:

Paul Hansmeier, lead attorney for plaintiff AF Holdings, LLC

John Steele, formerly a legal partner of Mr. Hansmeier

Brent Berry, northern MN real estate lawyer

Jason Flesher, northern MN resident

Alan Cooper, who alleges his signature was forged on documents related
to AF Holdings

Paul Godfread, attorney for Mr. Cooper

And some audience members.

John Steele Takes The Stand

Mr. Hansmeier began the day by calling his first witness, Steele, and
displaying to him on a document viewer the copyright assignment for
"Sexual Obsession." Mr. Steele authenticated the assignor's signature
as that of Ray Rogers, based on familiarity with Mr. Rogers signature
from several instances of business, etc. Mr. Steele also testified
that he believed the use of Mr. Cooper's signature on this document
was authorized, because Steele introduced Cooper to the
owner/controlling member of AF Holdings.

At this point, and at a couple of later points, the judge asked what
exhibit number the documents were that Hansmeier was displaying (since
the document viewers don't produce an ongoing copy.) Hansmeier
apparently didn't intend to offer the documents into evidence, but the
court later entered the copyright assignments in question (originally
filed as exhibits in cases 12-1445 - 1449) as exhibits 1 and 2 for
this hearing.

Hansmeier elicited lengthy testimony from Steele as to his knowledge
of Cooper's involvement with AF Holdings, his involvement with helping
Cooper to form a company (VPR, Inc) to market adult content, and about
the nature of Steele and Cooper's relationship over the years. The
overview of this testimony is that Cooper was recommended to Steele in
2006 or so as a possible caretaker for his cabin in northern MN, that
Cooper lived there subsequently rent-free in exchange for a limited
amount of work around the property, that subsequent to Steele's
divorce they had hung out more, and that they had been "very good
friends by 2010." Steele also testified that he had helped Cooper set
up VPR, Inc, that Steele had introduced Cooper to Mark Lutz, and heard
Cooper's end of phone calls with Lutz on at least two occasions, and
that Cooper had gotten "a kick" out of being associated with the adult
industry, and repeatedly joked with friends and others about coming to
work for him in his porn company, at least as early as 2011.

Steele testified that he had closed his law firm, Steele Hansmeier,
over a short period starting in November 2011, because "I was quite
frankly surprised with the vitriol and nastiness of the pirates we
were pursuing." He mentioned a blog post that showed pictures of his
house and small child, and included violent threats against the
family. Steele appeared visibly upset during this part of his
testimony. Steele continued his testimony to affirm that after closing
the lawfirm, he decided to sell his cabin in July of 2012. At this
point, the Judge himself intervened to ask what the point of this
testimony was; Mr. Hansmeier said it was directed towards motive.

Steele then testified that Mr. Cooper had been angry and hostile once
he knew the sale was going forward, and that Cooper had taken items
from the property, caused property damage, and attacked or threatened
people who came on the property. The judge again intervened, to direct
the discussion toward an end point; Mr. Hansmeier then asked Steele
about his knowledge of rumors, started by Mr. Cooper, that Steele had
molested Cooper's daughter.

Things then got refocused on the topic of the hearing. The copyright
assignment for "Popular Demand" was shown to Steele, and he again
authenticated Ray Rogers's signature for the assignor, and stated that
Steele himself had used this document to file registration documents
with the Copyright Office. Then, focusing on the other signature,
Steele testified that he did not know if Cooper had signed the
documents himself, but spoke to his "understanding" that Cooper had
authorized Lutz and his people to sign documents like this on his
behalf.

Judge Noel then directed several questions to Steele about the
documents in question, and Steele's understanding that Cooper had
authorized Lutz to sign on his behalf. Judge Noel elicited that this
was based on hearing Cooper's half of two phone conversations with
Lutz. Noel also elicited that Steele does not actually know if Cooper
signed those documents, but that as far as Steele knew, Cooper had had
a position as a "helper" for AF Holdings. Steele testified that he did
not know if Cooper was employed by AF -- because Steele himself had no
involvement with AF, other than them having been very briefly clients
of the Steele Hansmeier firm. Finally, Noel questioned Steele as to
whether he knew who signed the Cooper name on either of the exhibits,
and Steele testified that he did not.

Jason Flesher's testimony

Hansmeier called Jason Flesher to the stand, who testified that he had
known both Steele and Cooper for 4-5 years. Hansmeier began
questioning Flesher about the nature of Steele and Cooper's
relationship, but the judge redirected him, and he then focused his
questioning on Flesher's knowledge of Cooper's involvement in AF
holdings. Flesher testified that Cooper's partner, Charity (last name
not ever clearly established) had talked with him about her concern
over Cooper's adult industry involvement on cabin visits as early as
2011, but that he did not know anything further about Cooper's
invovlement in signing documents, or details of his involvements with
any companies. The judge briefly questioned Flesher about his
knowledge of the copyright assignment documents (none) or familiarity
with Cooper's signature (none), and Flesher was dismissed.

Brent Berry's testimony

Hansmeier called Brent Berry to the stand, and began questioning him
about the nature of Cooper and Steele's relationship, Cooper's
behavior after Steele decided to sell the house, and so on. The judge
intervened to focus again on the documents, eliciting that Berry had
seen Cooper's signature before, but wouldn't recognize it on sight,
and did not know if the signature on the documents was Cooper's.

Alan Cooper takes the stand

Hansmeier then called Cooper to the stand. Hansmeier's questions posed
to Cooper were often spoken quite quickly, so in a number of
instances, Cooper had to ask them to be restated. Cooper also fairly
frequently didn't respond directly to the questions, so this part of
the recap is a bit more out of order.

Hansmeier's initial line of questioning focused on Cooper's claim that
other AF Holdings documents had included forgeries. Cooper wasn't
quite sure why he was being questioned about other people's
signatures; "I'm concerned about my signature." Finally, the judge
directed some specific questions about Cooper's knowledge about
specific signatures related to the case, and Cooper responded that he
did not have any specific evidence about forgeries of signatures for
Mooney, Webber, or Salt Marsh. Godfread objected that this seemed to
be litigating the motion pending in October, and this was sustained.

Hansmeier began a new line of questioning, about Cooper's testimony in
other courts as to his involvement with AF Holdings. Cooper
acknowledged that he became aware that his signature was being used
related to AF Holdings in late 2012. Cooper stated that Steele had
told him at an earlier date that if anyone asked any questions, they
were to be directed to Steele. Hansmeier cut off Cooper's testimony on
that point, and kept questioning him about other members of his
community who might have made him aware of his involvement at an
earlier date. Cooper testified that his father-in-law (an ex
law-enforcement officer) had told him he needed to find out why
Steele was telling him to forward any questions.

After this, Hansmeier's questions shifted direction repeatedly. He
raised several points apparently intended to discredit Cooper: about
being paid for testimony (Cooper denied he is), having expenses
covered for his trip to an LA hearing (Cooper affirmed flight and one night
hotel were covered by EFF), lost jobs (Cooper denied), mental health
diagnoses and medications (also denied), and whether Cooper had ever
signed anything on behalf of Steele (some unclear discussion about DMV
registrations.)

There was a confusing line of questioning about why Cooper thinks he's
being held out as CEO of AF Holdings. Cooper tried to look something
up on his phone (and was directed by the judge to stop). Cooper
basically insisted that he wasn't the CEO of AF Holdings, and the
judge eventually said that whatever was on the documents in evidence
would have to be good enough. Hansmeier worked hard to get Cooper to
testify "who told you that your name was being held out as CEO of AF
Holdings" but Cooper just didn't remember, and focused on his concerns
about his signature being misused.

Another line of questioning focused on how Cooper had retained
Godfread, and a text message he had received, which was his first
alert as to his name being used in association with AF Holdings.
Cooper testified that the text had come from a Kim Eckenrode, who is John Steele's mother-in-law. Cooper also
testified that he had been referred to Godfread via an attorney whose
number Eckenrode had texted to him.

Cooper denied any specific memory of March 18, 2011 (which I believe
is the date Steele testified he introduced Cooper to Lutz by phone.)
Finally, Hansmeier asked Cooper why he believed Steele owned Prenda
Law; Cooper said Steele told him that, but that he had never seen any
documents to that effect.

The judge then questioned Cooper, establishing that he had no
familiarity with AF Holdings prior to the text from Eckenrode, that
Cooper had never worked for AF Holdings or AF Films (Steele had
previously testified that he thought any mentions of AF Films were
typos), that he'd never signed any documents on behalf of AF Holdings
or Films, that the signatures on the copyright assignments in question
are not his and that he does not know who signed them, that he did not
authorize anyone to sign his name, and that he did not know these
documents were being submitted to a court "with what purports to be
your signature."

Godfread then questioned his client; Cooper denied Steele approaching
him in 2010 about getting involved in the porn industry. He also
stated that he did not know about VPR, Inc before last year, nor had
he agreed to be an officer or have any other position with that group,
nor to authorize use of his signature for that venture. Cooper stated
that he had never met Lutz, nor talked to Lutz on the phone, nor ever
indirectly told someone to talk to Lutz on his behalf. Cooper said
that he did not authorize use of his signature on any documents
related to AF Holdings or AF Films.

Godfread introduced a copy of the text from Eckenrode, including an
attached image of Cooper's purported signature on a document. There
was some discussion about the admissibility of this copy of the text,
including questioning from the judge about how Godfread had gotten the
text to the page (emailed to himself). It was entered in the record as
Exhibit 3, "with all caveats about what it purports to be." Godfread
questioned Cooper basically as to whether the printout of the text was
what Cooper had received from Eckenrode. The judge asked briefly if
Cooper had ever received any money from AF Holdings or VPR, or been
employed by AF (no to all.)

Hansmeier then questioned Cooper (or tried to) about Hansmeier's own
previous conversations with Cooper. Cooper expressed confusion about
whether he'd met Paul Hansmeier or his brother Peter, and maintained
that whichever brother had visited the cabin, Cooper had not been
around much or talked much with him. Hansmeier brought up that he had
stayed in Cooper's own cabin, but Cooper said he'd stayed away during
that visit because "I didn't want to deal with you". Hansmeier,
apparently taken somewhat aback, said "I didn't know that," and
allowed that line of questioning to drop.

Hansmeier tried to call Godfread to the stand, and Godfread objected.
The judge conferred with his clerk for a bit, and questioned Hansmeier as
to his intent in questioning Godfread (to establish whether AF
Holdings had any knowledge of Cooper's concerns prior to filing the
copyright assignments with courts). Godfread reiterated no knowledge
on those points. After a bit more conferring, Judge Noel directed the
attorneys to Shelton v. American Motors, 805 F 2d 1323 as on point,
and said they'd reconvene on that point after lunch.

Before lunch, Hansmeier brought Steele back to the stand to address
the text message (over Godfread's objections as to Steele's lack of
direct knowledge of the conversation.) Steele testified that his
mother-in-law is very religious and was very concerned over his
involvement with the adult industry, and had been active on Die Troll
Die and other sites. He testified that he has no interest in Prenda
Law, but that she had gotten over excited about "random guesswork from
internet pirates." Hansmeier also questioned Steele as to whether
Cooper has any other litigation pending against Steele -- he does, but
Steele said "it defies logic" that an attorney would forge a signature
when he could get anyone in the world to sign a document.

The judge questioned Steele about the text message, eliciting that he
doesn't know whether it was sent by his mother-in-law, but that it was
consistent with the tone of "anonymous pirates on the internet." He
mentioned something about the Secretary of State of Illinois, and
Judge Noel followed up to ask about that; Steele testified that the
Secretary of State website would show that Prenda was created by Paul
Duffy. There was some additional questioning about St Kitts and Nevis,
and AF Holdings and Prenda, and that a lot of people incorporate
there.

Where's Mark Lutz?

We broke just before noon, to reconvene after lunch on the point of
whether Godfread would testify. When we reconvened, Hansmeier, having
read the case the judge suggested, recalled his request to have
Godfread testify. And then things got really interesting.

Judge Noel referred to his order for this hearing including an order
for Cooper to appear in person, and for an officer of the plaintiff
"capable of testifying as to the authenticity" of the documents to
also appear. He reviewed the witnesses who had appeared, and noted
that we'd heard nothing from AF Holdings -- though he mentioned that he
was "not sure what Steele's role" was in all this other than being a
former partner of Hansmeier... "So," he said, "Where's AF Holdings?"

Hansmeier said that Lutz was planning to come, and is the sole officer
of AF Holdings, and did make it to an earlier conference in this case
in person, but that he wasn't present today, and that Mr. Hansmeier
hadn't been able to reach him by phone or email. He voluntarily
elaborated that Steele and Lutz had been booked on the same flight
from Miami, that Steele had gone to Lutz's apartment to meet him
(because Steele had Lutz's boarding pass), but found him not home.
Steele had then, according to Hansmeier, driven around Miami looking
for Lutz, and even encountered some of Lutz's friends who said Lutz
had told them the night before that he had to make an early night of
it because he was traveling to this court in the morning. Hansmeier
offered the boarding pass as proof that Lutz had intended to come.
(Steele was not present in the courtroom after lunch.)

Godfread suggested that Lutz has repeatedly failed to appear at
evidentiary hearings related to AF Holdings cases. Hansmeier responded
by stating that Lutz hadn't been able to attend one hearing because
he'd been detained by "federal agents" in an airport (the court
requested clarification on this point, but all Hansmeier had was that;
he stated that Lutz had asked to file further details of that
detention, in that case, under seal because the detention was
embarrassing.) Hansmeier finally stated that Lutz has appeared,
before Judge Snow in Arizona, on closely related points.

Judge Noel took this all in, gave parties until close of business
tomorrow to file all declarations, and said he'd issue an order "in
due course." The court recessed just about ten minutes after convening
for the afternoon.

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]]>and mark lutz has disappearedhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130930/16321924703Fri, 6 Jul 2012 07:07:00 PDTDef Leppard Covers Its Own Songs With 'Forgeries' To Fight Back Against Universal MusicMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtmlcompulsory licenses for doing cover song recordings, such that you don't need to ask for permission. It appears that the band Def Leppard is now taking advantage of that in an attempt to fight back against Universal Music (who they feel owe them royalties) by re-recording their entire back catalog (sent in by a bunch of you) and re-releasing them. They're referring to their own re-recordings as "forgeries."

With newly recorded "forgeries" of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Rock of Ages" now available, the quintet has begun a series of re-recordings of its catalog material and "wrestled control of our career back" from the Universal Music Group, which frontman Joe Elliott says the band refuses to deal with "until we come up with some kind of arrangement" over compensation, especially for digital downloads.

"When you're at loggerheads with an ex-record label who...is not prepared to pay you a fair amount of money and we have the right to say, 'Well, you're not doing it,' that's the way it's going to be," Elliott tells Billboard.com. "Our contract is such that they can't do anything with our music without our permission, not a thing. So we just sent them a letter saying, 'No matter what you want, you are going to get "no" as an answer, so don't ask.' That's the way we've left it. We'll just replace our back catalog with brand new, exact same versions of what we did."

Of course, you'd have to imagine that someone else still holds the publishing rights, but if the new "forgeries" -- which apparently take quite some time to get exactly right -- sell well, the band could end up keeping a much larger share of the money. Either way, this seems like yet another story in a very, very long line of such stories, of bands reporting on the many ways in which the major labels have screwed them over. Makes you wonder if there are any acts who feel they weren't screwed over by their major label...

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]]>well,-that's-one-way-to-do-thingshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120706/04162619600Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:08:00 PDTPaul Ceglia To Facebook: I Didn't Forge A Contract, You Did!Mike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtmlhas nothing to do with Facebook, suggesting that Ceglia forged the contract at the center of the dispute.

Ceglia’s main argument appears to be that the original “authentic contract” Facebook says it found is really just a Photoshopped image the company planted on his computer. He says he and his lawyers reportedly knew about it for some time and willingly handed it over to Facebook. He declares that his team will prove the image in question “has no authenticating properties whatsoever.”

Ceglia speculates it could have been Zuckerberg himself, or the US law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe that may have done the alleged dirty work. He also says Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savrin accused Orrick of “conspiring with Zuckerberg to deprive him of his shares during his case.”

The rest of the article is pretty funny. As we've mentioned in the past, Ceglia has had trouble keeping lawyers, as most of his lawyers have ditched him after becoming more aware of the details of the case. That's generally a huge warning sign that the lawyers don't believe the client. In this article, Ceglia claims that he's looking for a more "collaborative" law firm, and is trying to open source his defense via a wiki (good luck with that). Nothing in the claims that Ceglia makes in this article make him sound any more credible. He's about to lose this lawsuit.

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]]>nice-tryhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110817/14471315563Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:41:16 PSTLobbyists Forge Letters To Pretend There's A 'Grassroots' Interest In Derivatives ReformMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtmlthe regulatory scramble to rewrite our banking rules. The whole podcast is interesting, but there's a bit in the middle about one of the tactics used by lobbyists to influence the rules: they totally forged letters from individuals and small businesses to make it seem like there was "grassroots" support for a particular position on derivatives reform.

We've seen similar things before, where various DC lobbying groups make "deals" with various groups to put their name on letters. A few years ago there was a disturbing quote from someone who did this for a living who explained how it works:

"You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them.... You say, 'I can't use this one--I already used them last time...' We had their letterhead. We'd just write the letter. We'd fax it to them and tell them, 'You're in favor of this.'"

Except, in this latest case, the subcontractor of the subcontractor of the lobbying firm didn't even do that last part. They just forged the letters entirely -- including from a small Burger King franchise and a circuit court judge who was not happy about her name being used this way. It appears the only way this was actually noticed was because a Bloomberg reporter was lazily scanning the letters to the CFTC (the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and was surprised to see what looked like very out-of-place letters. Everything else was from big banks and big financial institutions. Letters from a Burger King franchise seemed odd. So the reporter called... and the franchise had no idea what the CFTC was, let alone why its name was on a letter pushing the CFTC in a particular direction about derivatives reform.

And yet, these kinds of letters do influence regulatory decisions -- which is a big part of the problem.

The Planet Money podcast discusses how these regulators need lobbyists to actually understand what they're regulating. And, it's absolutely true that the regulators don't really understand the issues at all, while those in the industry do understand what kind of impact regulatory changes will have. But, really, that's an argument for taking a rather light regulatory touch on these issues, since the regulations are going to be driven by lobbyists who understand the issue better than the regulators. Thus, the end result is almost always going to be in the favor of big players in the industry who can afford lobbyists (whether they do underhanded things like forge letters or just do more aboveboard lobbying). This is the concern that many folks have.

Yes, there are problems with a light regulatory touch. But the assumption that we need heavy regulations ignores how bad people are at regulating most industries, and how much regulatory capture there is in the rulemaking. The end results of aggressive regulation, driven by lobbyists, can often be worse than no regulation at all.

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]]>that's-called-scamminghttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110210/12363113040Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:19:37 PDTForging Science: The Story Of How Famed Painting Authenticator Likely Duped The Art WorldMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtmlWho the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?. It's a really amazing documentary. Compelling, well-done and really entertaining. The reviewers loved it too. It tells the story of a truck driver woman, who bought a painting for $5 at a garage sale, and is convinced that it's actually done by Jackson Pollock. The movie has numerous amusing scenes with famed art experts staring at the painting and dismissing it in the most... condescending of tones. Eventually, the "hero" of the film is a guy named Peter Paul Biro, who matches a fingerprint on the back of the painting to one he found in Pollock's (still preserved) studio. The movie ends and you're absolutely convinced that the painting is really by Pollock -- even if the art world won't recognize it. At the end of the film, the truck driver who bought the painting has turned down a $2 million and a $9 million offer for the painting, holding out for the $50 million she's sure it's worth. I highly recommend watching it (though, oddly, I can't seem to find any video clips of it online -- not even a trailer for the flick).

Remembering that, I was fascinated to see that The New Yorker recently did a long feature piece on Peter Paul Biro and dove in to read it. The first half of the article covers Biro's rise to fame. How a few of these "fingerprinting" authentications had made him quite famous, with that documentary ratcheting up his fame level even higher. The key point that everyone keeps noting is that, rather than the traditional form of authentication -- the condescending art experts in the documentary who are ripe for mocking and use what often feel like extremely subjective techniques -- this involved science. After all, if the fingerprints matched, how can you question that?

But, then, the article takes a turn. There are a few cracks in the story, and someone who knows Biro well suggests that the reporter, David Grann, look a bit more deeply into Biro's (and his family's) history. It turns out that they were involved in several lawsuits years earlier involving selling what were later found to be forged artwork. Of course, painting forgeries are nothing new, but as Grann dug deeper and deeper he kept coming across evidence that Biro's "authentications," may have involved questionable practices -- including planting faked fingerprints on some of the paintings he was supposed to be authenticating. It's an amazing and gripping article -- and totally calls into question pretty much all of Biro's work. At the end of it, I was just as convinced that the truck driver's "Pollock" painting is not by Pollock, as I was that it was by Pollock at the end of the documentary!

But I found most interesting of all was the reasons why so many people were convinced that Biro's authentications were real. It wasn't just the use of "science." And it wasn't just that people had this natural inclination to believe that so-called "art experts" don't know what they're talking about, but that Biro appears (and, for what it's worth, Biro denies the allegations in the article) to have used what are effectively social engineering tricks to make this work. There's a certain brilliance in realizing that rather than forging paintings, there may be money to be made in authenticating works by effectively forging fingerprints on top of other works -- which then gives it the air of legitimacy-via-science. Honestly, the whole idea that someone would go in and forge fingerprints on top of a piece of art work just doesn't seem in the realm of possibility, and so most people didn't even consider it.

I had started reading the article last week (as mentioned, it's pretty long), but ended up finishing it up now, because I was thinking some more about the recent story of those glass negatives that have been "authenticated" as being from Ansel Adams -- which Ansel Adams' estate is vehemently denying are Adams' work. After reading The New Yorker piece, it's difficult not to be increasingly skeptical of the claims of these new negatives, even with all of the "scientific" evidence that has been mentioned by the team involved in the authentication.

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]]>fingerprint-thishttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100729/01335510404Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:19:02 PDTPeter Sunde Brings Criminal Charges Against BREIN, Claims They Falsified Documents Against The Pirate BayMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtmlagainst The Pirate Bay at the behest of BREIN, the local anti-piracy group. Now, there was a lot of things odd about the case. BREIN has always been quite aggressive in demanding that sites be blocked or that ISPs be forced to block sites, but this case went really far. BREIN was able to bring the case without even letting any of the four defendants (the same four who were on trial in Sweden) know about the case. However, BREIN told the court that the defendants were fairly summoned, despite no evidence that was true at all. BREIN also claimed that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website, and seemed so close to the court that when the defendants themselves asked the court for the very ruling made against them, the court told them that they could only get the copy directly from BREIN.

Of course, after all this happened, a second problem cropped up. Swedish authorities did an investigation and came to the conclusion -- as the four defendants had said all along -- that those four guys did not actually own The Pirate Bay. Instead, it was a company called Reservella, information that came out to the public after the attempt by GGF to buy The Pirate Bay (which has since collapsed).

BREIN wasted little time in adding Reservella to its lawsuits... but then did something strange. It came up with a credit report that purports to prove that one of the four defendants, Fredrik Neij, is the CEO and a director of Reservella. However, there were some oddities in that credit report, and Peter Sunde (one of the other defendants, better known as brokep) began investigating and has rather detailed evidence that the entire credit report is a fake. Almost none of the information on the report checks out, and the companies listed -- including Experian, who supposedly supplied the credit report, claim that they have no record of this particular credit report at all.

Sunde is now filing criminal charges against BREIN and its boss Tim Kuik, claiming that they forged a document and used it for fraud (trying to get money out of these four defendants). As Sunde notes, such charges seem to be far more serious than inducing copyright infringement. The evidence that Sunde lays out certainly looks convincing that the document is fake, but what's still not clear is how BREIN got the document, and whether it was responsible for creating the document, or if it was merely convinced that the fake document was real from someone else.

Still, it doesn't look good for BREIN to be caught using what appear to be faked documents in its lawsuit.

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]]>spectrial-indeedhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091008/1038336461Thu, 4 Dec 2008 07:42:00 PSTHow To Steal The Empire State BuildingMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtmlConsumerist points us to a story about how The Daily News newspaper in New York was able to quickly forge some documents and get the deed to the Empire State Building handed over, no questions asked. Apparently, there's really no verification process at all. As the paper points out, while most folks probably would notice this with the ESB, for plenty of other buildings it's an effective scam for someone who wants to take out a bogus mortgage (and then disappear). You would think, in this day and age, there would be a somewhat more involved process and checks before simply handing over the deeds on any building, let alone a landmark like the Empire State Building.